


Down Deep

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Awkward Radio Hosts, Character Study, Eventual Romance, For Science!, Friendship, Humor, M/M, POC Cecil, Relatively Canon-Compliant, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-01
Updated: 2014-04-18
Packaged: 2018-01-17 20:36:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 12,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1401646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A scientist arrives in Night Vale with little more than some decades-old faulty research and a single battered suitcase. He wishes he knew the punchline. On hiatus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Descent

**Author's Note:**

> Rating, warnings, and tags may change as the story progresses.

06/15/2012, 2:17AM

Cecil’s voice is the first thing Carlos hears in Night Vale.

It’s two in the morning. He’s spent twelve hours on what should have been a four-hour drive. The needle has been hovering threateningly over “empty” on his gas gauge for the last two hundred miles. He  _thinks_  it’s been two hundred miles. He’s started to distrust basic measurements during this pilgrimage, to the point where he wonders if the sun-bleached sign announcing  _Welcome to Night Vale!_ is a mirage.

There’s a burst of static as his car lurches over the town line. When the numbers on the radio display are done flickering wildly, the broadcast streams through his speakers, liquid and penetrating.

"And now," a man’s voice says, as Carlos furiously mashes the  _seek_ button, “the weather.” He says it with an air of foreboding, completely at odds with the cheerful music that follows.

One of the reports mentioned something about this—a single radio station, an unchangeable channel, and an erratic host whose idea of news seemed to be whatever unfiltered gossip landed on his desk. Carlos didn’t trust the reliability of that particular report, or any of the reports, actually. All of the writers seemed to have vanished after writing them, and only half had later turned up in various psychiatric hospitals across the country.

Well. He gives up on his rebelling radio and focuses on the promising glow of an Arby’s sign. He knew when he applied for the grant that there would be…independent variables to contend with. Wasn’t that the point?

He passes a car lot, a trailer park, and a modest building with an oversized radio tower perched on its roof before reaching the Arby’s. When he turns his car off, the broadcast continues, even though the display has gone dark.

"Don’t you ever turn the radios off?" he asks the surly teenager inside the Arby’s, eyeing the battered old transceiver on the counter. He’s not yet ready to admit his hypothesis aloud—the one involving radios that simply  _don’t_ turn off.

The girl thrusts an outdated drink cup at him. He recognizes the design from about ten years ago.

"That would be like killin’ a creature," she says, looking at him like he belongs in a psychiatric hospital.

"Right," he agrees, worrying about his blood sugar, and doesn’t ask for directions to a gas station.

He doesn’t really listen to the content of the broadcast while he eats his half-cold curly fries. Whenever he tries to focus, the questionable news items forcefully remind him that this is his headache now, and untangling fact from fiction is going to be an exhausting endeavor. But the host’s voice—so long as he pays no mind to the individual words—is soothing, deep and rhythmic. Carlos has never heard a voice more clearly made for radio.

"Can you point me to Big Rico’s?" he asks the teenager, wishing the girl wore a nametag.

She literally points, giving him an unimpressed stare, as though he should be able to find his way in the pitch dark of a town lacking regular street lights that he’s never navigated before with merely her unhelpful gesticulation.

"Thanks," he says, unsure whether she’s being intentionally hostile or just apathetic, and resolves to get a good night’s sleep before showing his face to the rest of the town.

The radio on his battered night stand doesn’t turn off even when he unplugs it from the wall. The voice gets a little quieter, though, as though to acknowledge that he is trying to sleep.

"Thanks," he mutters, and wishes he could banish the feeling that he’s being watched.


	2. Welcome

Carlos is wrecked, but that doesn’t mean he sleeps past eight. Old habits die hard, and someone neglected to put blackout curtains over the windows of his borrowed apartment; the sheer panels do nothing to block out the full-force sunlight. It roasts him where he lies, slowly suffocating, beneath a threadbare quilt that isn’t his.

Downstairs, someone knocks. Carlos throws the quilt back and heaves his legs out of bed with a groan. The (unplugged) radio on his nightstand speaks now in a soft feminine voice, relaying a series of numbers. He abandons the curiosity, does his best to mash down his unruly hair—made even more unruly by sweat and a restless night’s sleep—and trudges down the stairs to investigate the knocking.

He passes through the lab to get to the door. Despite Night Vale’s generally run-down appearance, it’s well-equipped, shiny and new, with a lot of equipment and a lot of brightly gleaming surfaces. He shakes his head, bemused, and opens the door.

The woman on the other side nearly overbalances. She huffs, already sweating in the morning heat, and heaves up the box in her arms. There’s a duffel bag slung over her shoulder, too. She had clearly been knocking with her foot. She’s wearing a lab coat.

”Reporting for duty,” she says brightly, with just a hint of strain. “I’m Camila.”

"Right," Carlos replies, recalling the profiles of the other scientists funded by Night Vale’s grant. "Carlos. Can I help you with that?"

"Thanks." She thrusts the box into his hands. "How long did it take  _you_ to find this fucking place? I drove around in that goddamn desert for six hours longer than I should’ve.”

"Er," Carlos says, wondering whether he should be relieved or terrified to have his experience corroborated, "yeah. Me, too."

"And the radios," she continues, brushing past him. Her dark hair—cut in a bob—glistens at her temples. She sighs in relief the moment she finds an A/C vent and stands in front of it.

"They don’t shut off," Carlos agrees.

"Shut up, more like it," she says, still cheerful. "Have you seen any of our other esteemed colleagues, or should we assume they’ve been taken by the Sheriff’s Secret Police?" She snickers.

He lets out a half-hearted chuckle and sets her box down on one of the desks. “You’re the first I’ve seen. If you’ve been driving all night, maybe you should—”

"Oh, yeah, I was just dropping by," she says. "My car broke down about a mile back, and the lab was on the way to my…" She fishes a slightly damp piece of paper out of her pocket and reads, " _Approved habitation location_.” She snorts and flashes him a bright smile. “Anyway. Looking forward to working with you.”

"You, too. Hey, did you see any…I don’t know, diners on your way in?"

"Moonlite All-Nite Diner, by the Arby’s," she says, making for the door. "You know, next to the radio tower? Can’t miss it. Don’t know if it’s open during the daytime, though." She snickers again.

He  _did_ miss it, though. He doesn’t tell her.

He passes back through the lab, convinced that a cold shower will help with the heat headache pooling in his temples. At one point, he thinks he sees movement behind the frosted glass behind the shower curtain, but that’s impossible, he reassures himself. He’s on the second floor, after all.

He decides to walk to the Moonlite Diner, his orientation binder in hand. It’s a pathetic scrap of materials, really, and contains more gibberish than he knows what to do with—but maybe he was just too tired to comprehend it the last time he cracked the pages. It hasn’t exactly been an easy few weeks.

The diner is mostly deserted when he walks in, sweating afresh even in a thin t-shirt. The only patron is a man at the counter, his back to the door. His shoulders straighten when the bell chimes, but otherwise, he doesn’t move at all. Cautiously, Carlos tips his head a bit to the side to see the man’s plate, and lets out a sigh of relief at the perfectly normal half-eaten eggs, hash browns, and sausage links resting on chipped white stoneware. He’s not sure what he expected, but spotting normal things—like the cracked mint-green vinyl of the booths—is already a relief.

The sign tells him to seat himself, so he slides into a booth and pulls a menu from behind the condiments. There are some more unusual items, but there’s also traditional breakfast fare.

"What can I get ya?" The waitress is poised at the end of his table, notepad in hand.

"Uhm, the scrambled egg breakfast, please," he says, tucking the menu away.

She scribbles something illegible from this distance. “Be right up.”

He pulls his glasses from his pocket as she walks away and cracks open the binder. The first few pages are sensical enough: the names, CVs, and publications lists of his fellow scientists. There are six of them. One of them is planning to write their dissertation in Night Vale. Another is nearly seventy years old. They are all from different disciplines, and they all seem reasonably competent, but if that were the case, well—why would they be here?

He snorts and turns to the next section, where the welcome binder begins in earnest. The invitation letter seems innocuous enough, really, even with the seven-pointed star of the Sheriff’s Secret Police stamped into the upper right-hand corner.  _Your experience has impressed us_ , blah blah.  _We hope that you will accept this funding_ , blah blah.  _Please come to our town to conduct your research_ , etcetera.

The next pages are when it all falls apart. None of it is scientific research; no, this is all community information about Night Vale. The community that Carlos is determined not to be a part of, because they have a painfully high mortality rate, and he still likes breathing, generally speaking. There’s an  _Alert Citizen_ card, stamped once—for what, he doesn’t know. There’s a community calendar, with some days labeled as simply  _cancelled_. There’s a map, but every time he blinks, something seems to have shifted on it. He doesn’t linger on that page for too long. He wonders if there’s an optometrist in Night Vale, and then wonders if he’d dare set foot in that office if there is one.

At the back of his binder is what his own research turned up: disjointed articles, tales of madmen or a mad place or maybe both. Whatever data exists is so far beyond what’s typical—for weather patterns, seismic waves, radioactivity—that he doesn’t see how Night Vale hasn’t crumbled into dust by now.

"I brought ya a coffee. Cecil thought you could use one."

"Oh." The beverage is plonked down in front of him. Despite the height from which the waitress drops it, the coffee doesn’t spill. She also sets down a small pitcher of cream and a tiny bowl of brown sugar. "Who’s Cecil?"

She brays a laugh. He flinches. “Good one, sonny.”

He doesn’t see anyone else in the diner. Unless the cook is peering out from behind the kitchen door to get a good look at him, Cecil could only be the man at the counter, but he hasn’t turned to look at Carlos.

"Thanks," he calls in that general direction, not a little awkwardly.

The man wheels around on his stool. He wears a lopsided smile, and his black-rimmed glasses flash in the overhead light, concealing what color his eyes are. Carlos is a little intimidated by the man’s ease until he nearly overbalances on his stool and only barely catches himself.

"You’re welcome," he says, with the air of someone attempting to regain his dignity. He fishes a few bills out of the pocket of his slacks. "Welcome to Night Vale."

The voice is vaguely familiar. Carlos bites his lip on the stereotypical question— _do I know you?_ —and turns back to his coffee. By the time he looks up again, Cecil is gone, even though the chime above the doorway didn’t ring.

"Don’t worry about it," the waitress says when Carlos reaches for his billfold. "Cecil took care of it."

He frowns. “Why?”

She rolls her eyes. “Why does Cecil do anything?”

Carlos takes refuge in his lab. There’s nothing unfamiliar there, only the quiet hum of instruments malfunctioning, and even the series of chirps and whistles coming from the radio is sort of comforting.


	3. Locals

Four of the six scientists find their way to the lab over the course of the morning. They get busy setting up their stations, taking stock of their equipment, and gossiping quietly. Carlos doesn't direct them to do anything just yet. They all need time to adjust—settle in. Besides, he doesn't even know where to start.

One of the scientists is a Night Vale resident from the local community college. She introduces herself as Nita and promptly sets up camp in the southwestern corner of the lab. For a woman of barely twenty, she certainly seems self-assured, moving around equipment to her heart's content and not bothering to speak to any of them.

It's two in the afternoon—by Carlos's watch, not by the position of the sun, which is far too east for that—when the fluctuating static on the radio stops. A throat softly clears.

"Hey," Nita announces, setting herself down on the stool at her carefully-arranged work station. "Be quiet."

Carlos frowns at her, opens his mouth, and is promptly cut off by a man's sonorous voice. The same man from last night, as Carlos's car limped across the desert highway into this strange little town.

" _A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful, and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep...Welcome to Night Vale._ "

The way he says those words is familiar. Carlos knows that voice, even if it wasn't nearly so even--so cadenced, so deliberate--in the diner this morning. This voice could belong to a different man, a man who doesn't nearly spin off his stool accidentally.

Carlos chuckles—a warm, strangely pleased sound, the first of that kind he's made in weeks—and goes back to his inventory. He's awake enough now to listen to the announcements, and they sink in with increasing amusement. He wonders if the radio show is a joke—some sort of parody—but Nita is listening with rapt attention and no hint of a smile.

" _A new man came into town today. Who is he? What does he want from us? Why his perfect and beautiful haircut? Why his perfect and beautiful coat?_ "

Carlos nearly drops his clipboard. Nita lets out a soft giggle. Carlos clutches the clipboard with mounting horror as Cecil goes on.

" _He says he is a scientist. Well. We have **all** been scientists at one point or another in our lives. But why now? Why here? And just what does he plan to do with all those breakers and humming electrical instruments in that lab he's renting? The one next to Big Rico's Pizza. No one does a slice like Big Rico... **no one**._ "

Everyone in the room is looking at Carlos, and Carlos is painfully aware of the blood crawling up his neck, to his ears, to his _face_. Christ. He's _blushing_. When was the last time he blushed?

"Already getting friendly with the locals, I see," Camila comments slyly, sticking him in the side with her pen.

"I only bumped into him at the diner," Carlos protests. "He hardly said two words to me! I didn't tell him I was a scientist! I wasn't even _wearing_ my coat! How—"

"It's just Cecil," Nita interrupts. "He knows just about everything that goes on in this town. I'll bet one of you should look into that. That's not how journalists are out there, is it?" She flaps her hand at the door, like that encompasses all of what's outside Night Vale.

"I'm a psychologist," Camila says, pocketing her pen. "Bet it's a brain thing. It's usually a brain thing."

Carlos feels uncomfortably faint. Nita just looks skeptical.

"We should do a meet-and-greet, boss," Camila comments. "Let the townspeople know we're here."

"They already know," Carlos replies helplessly, gesturing at the radio.

"Don't you know how the news works?" Camila asks, businesslike. "Get it before it gets you, you know? Before this Cecil guy can inflate their view of us too much." _Of you_ , Carlos thinks she means to say, but she's kind enough to throw her lot in with him.

"You can call a town meeting," Nita informs him, hopping down from her stool. "You'll need to follow this procedure, though."

Nita takes him through a chant in a quickly-assembled bloodstone circle and then dusts her hands off. "That should do it," she says, while he's still trying to scrap the fuzzy feeling off his tongue with his teeth. "C'mon, they'll be in front of City Hall. Don't touch those," she adds as he bends to examine the bloodstones. "Not until you know what you're doing."

Carlos yanks his lab coat straight and runs a hand over his hair. He really needs to get it cut.

*

Out in front of City Hall, the heat is truly sweltering. Nita doesn't seem to notice. The other denizens— _citizens_ , Carlos corrects himself hurriedly—don't seem to notice, either. He doesn't see sweat patches on the rest of them, even though it must be over a hundred degrees.

He sees Cecil standing in the assembled crowd, but pointedly doesn't make eye contact. Not that he could. The man's glasses seem to catch the light wherever he goes, instituting an opaque film between him and the rest of the world. _Lucky him_ , Carlos thinks resentfully. Just now, Carlos could use a good wall between him and Night Vale. Maybe then he wouldn't feel so much like a bug under a microscope.

He clears his throat and hops up to the podium, beside where his team is sitting at a long table. "Good afternoon," he greets. The microphone isn't plugged into anything, but his voice booms out over the lawn, anyway. Cecil beams from the back of the crowd, his smile blinding.

"My name is Carlos Montero, and I came here with this team of scientists to study some of the phenomena in Night Vale. You're by far the most scientifically interesting community in the U.S." Nita pops her chewing gum, unimpressed. "Look, I want to keep this short, but I'm looking forward to working with you all to see just what's going on around here. There's a lot to study."

He smiles, tries not to be unnerved by the men in suits wearing scowls in the back row, and gets down from the podium. Immediately, a short old woman toddles up to him, holding out a stainless steel pan.

"Cornbread?" she offers in a creaky voice. "It lacks salt."

The townspeople mill around, and all of them introduce themselves dozens of times over. Carlos wonders if there's ever been an accurate census for Night Vale. Reports have guessed that the town contains between five hundred and five thousand people, but that's quite a difference, and there certainly aren't five thousand people in this square.

"They don't all have to come to the town meetings," Nita tells him when he asks. "Only the real important ones."

Carlos wonders what it means that an old woman claiming she currently lives with a few angels is considered _important_ , but he doesn't question her. She probably doesn't know why, anyway.

"Carlos," an old man in a lab coat says—Navid, the seismologist from California. He's peering down at the smartphone in his hand, brow furrowed with worry. "I think someone patched me into that old monitoring station on Route 800, and it's giving me some…worrisome readings." He looks up at Carlos. "It's an 8.6."

"But the ground isn't moving," Carlos protests, leaning over to Navid's shoulder to get a closer look.

"I should go to the station. Take a closer look."

"Go," Carlos agrees. "Be careful."

The townspeople are listening curiously. There's a sort of hostility to their listening, though, in the way that they lean in, eyes narrowed. Carlos's collar feels uncomfortably tight around his neck. Cecil shoulders his way through the crowd just as Navid shoulders his way out.

"Any news to report, Carlos?" he asks cheerfully, as though they've known one another for years.

"Uhm," Carlos says, eyeing the radio host warily. His glasses have finally stopped doing that—that _thing_ they do—and his eyes are dark and watchful behind them. Carlos gets the feeling that he's being recorded, even though there's no sign of Cecil thrusting a microphone into his face. "The monitoring station is reporting...unusual seismic activity."

"Unusual?" Cecil presses, smiling indulgently, and draws every syllable out for much longer than necessary.

"Yes," Carols replied, firmer now. "One of my team has gone to investigate at the monitoring station. I take it that you're the community's news reporter?"

Cecil beams proudly. "I am!"

"I can give you updates as they occur, if you'd like," Carlos offers.

"Neat!" Cecil exclaims, and thrusts a business card at him. It's dusky purple, textured card stock, with silvery numbers and letters pressed into the paper. "Just call the station number, I'll be there all day."

"Good," Carlos mutters, pocketing the card.

"I'll disperse the crowd for you," Cecil murmurs back, with a conspirator's smile. "I'm sure you have important, scientific things to get back to."

"Right," Carlos agrees faintly.

Cecil winks. His glasses flash white again, and then he's calling to the crowd, leaving Carlos to slip away unnoticed, confused and grateful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Italicized radio announcements taken directly from "Pilot."


	4. Tests

Navid keeps him updated from the old monitoring station off Route 800. The equipment is all in perfect working order, and the wild readings are still spitting out, informing them of their steady transformation to so much rubble—if only Carlos could actually feel this ongoing, destructive earthquake. He considers, for the first time, that he might be in Hell or something like it. Maybe sometime in the last few weeks of sleep deprivation he died and didn’t notice.

That would be just like him. He’ll need to conduct some tests later. He pinches himself, just to try it out, and sighs in relief at the pain. It’s a start.

For now, though, he has news to pass on. He takes the business card out of his pocket and dials. His phone emits a noise he’s never heard it make before—something like a growl and then splutter, rather than ringing. He holds it a few inches from his head, just to spare his eardrums.

Cecil doesn’t take long to pick up. “Night Vale Community Radio!”

"The earthquakes are still happening," Carlos replies, not bothering to mention who’s calling. He has the weird feeling that Cecil knows, anyway. "We should be dead right now."

"Oh?" Cecil asks. His enthusiasm is palpable.

Carlos pinches the bridge of his nose, struggling to stay calm. “Yeah. Just…could you tell people? I know it seems like nothing is happening, but just in case something—changes—I mean, the equipment is all functioning fine,” he adds helplessly.

"Of course," Cecil replies, in the kindly tone of voice that implies that Carlos is overreacting.

"And one other thing," Carlos adds, wishing he could avoid saying it out loud. "There’s a house in this new development—ah, what’s it called—"

"Desert Creek," Cecil supplies.

"Right. Well, it doesn’t exist. It looks like it exists. I can see it and everything.” He can, indeed. He’s standing on the road looking right at it. Two of his scientists are standing nearby, eyeing the house and whispering to one another. “It looks like all the other houses, but it’s not really there. My hand goes right through it. We’re going to need to run some more tests. Just…tell people to stay away from it.”

"Of course," Cecil agrees again.

"Thanks, Cecil," Carlos mutters, and hurries to hang up before the radio host can become less professional. He’s still not sure what that  _perfect hair_ business earlier was all about. Maybe it was a joke.

"Do something about that," he calls to the whisperers, pocketing his phone.

"Like  _what_?” Karina splutters.

"Run some tests," Carlos says, making a beeline for his car. "That’s what we’re here for, right?"

But houses aren’t really his area of expertise, so he leaves them to titter and drives back to the lab, too lost in thought to be irritated by the roaring noises on the radio. It’s late in the day, now, according to his watch, but the sun is—the  _sun_ is…still up.

He parks, opens the browser on his phone, searches for  _sunset times New Mexico_. He doesn’t bother asking the thing to search for Night Vale. His GPS has reported being unable to locate him since long before entering town.  _Point in favor of the Hell theory_ , he thinks.

8:23PM, the chart tells him, but his watch says 8:28PM and the sun is still above the horizon. Barely, but. It matters. That’s a five minute difference.  _That’s nothing, really_ , he tries to convince himself, watching the sun creep lower.  _It just means that we’re a little further from Albuquerque than I thought._

The sun dips below the horizon at 8:33PM. He calls Cecil. He pretends not to notice that his gas tank is  _still_ empty, but his car is running fine.

"One more thing," he says. "The sun set too late tonight."

"Oh?" Carlos is starting to hate that word. Cecil makes it sound so—so _harmless_ , and yet, Carlos feels accused by it. He isn’t sure what the accusation is, but it’s something. “Do you have any theories?”

"No comment," Carlos mutters.

Camila knocks on his car window. He starts, and then, when Camila mimes rolling the window down, utters a quick, “Thanks, Cecil,” and hangs up.

"I’m going home," the psychologist announces, folding her arms on the window ledge. "I mean—to my approved habitation location, or whatever. Though I’ve gotta tell you, I think Karina and that other guy are thinking about leaving."

"I don’t blame them," he mutters. "What did you learn today?"

"That this whole town is nuts," she says, albeit cheerfully. She gives the roof of his car a friendly knock. "Have a good night, boss."

For a moment he sits still, car impossibly idling, while she walks away. Then, with a heavy sigh, he turns the engine off. He’s not done for the night, not yet. There are some things he has to confirm first.

He locks the door to the lab behind him.  _How do I test for existence?_ he wonders, and then wonders if he should ask Camila—brains aren’t really his thing, after all—but she would probably just laugh at him. She seems to be taking this whole mess in stride, and he doesn’t necessarily want to show weakness.

Pain. Pain is a good place to start. He hunts down a sterilized needle and pricks each of the fingers on his left hand in turn. He feels each one, along with the little burst of pain.  _Okay_ , he thinks, running his hand under cold water.  _What else?_

He does a push-up. Gravity resists him about as much as it usually does. He does jumping jacks until he starts sweating. He’s glad the lab doesn’t have windows. He must look ridiculous. He certainly  _feels_ ridiculous.

Abruptly, unexpectedly, the geiger counter resting peacefully on his worktable squawks.

At precisely the same moment, Cecil’s voice comes over the radio, deep and assured and nothing at all likes he sounds in person.

Ignoring Cecil, Carlos examines the geiger counter. The level of radiation is fairly low, but still, there’s something there that wasn’t just a minute ago. He wishes that this were the least strange thing that’s happened to him today, but as far as strange goes, this is still competing with the house that doesn’t exist and the massive earthquakes he can’t feel. He picks the geiger counter up, and the rate of clicking increases—just slightly.

He follows the increasing readout: out the door of his lab, to the street, through the town. He looks up, sees the radio tower straight ahead, and realizes where it’s leading him.

He briefly thinks he ought to have donned a hazmat suit, but he’s not even sure the lab has one, and there’s no time to go back now—not if the radiation is really as bad as the readout claims, and not if Cecil is up there, broadcasting, possibly sitting right in the middle of the toxicity.

He wonders if he’ll drop dead before he gets there, but the whole earthquake thing hasn’t killed him yet. Maybe radiation works the same way. Maybe the geiger counter is faulty. Maybe…

He braces himself and follows the frantic machine, right to the door of the radio station, where not a single person steps forward to stop him.


	5. Contamination

Inside the station, nothing seems amiss—but unless a bomb has just gone off, radiation is colorless, odorless, invisible. Carlos shudders, wondering if something like that happened and he just didn’t notice, and presses onward. The employees lounging outside the studio seem unaffected, and merely watch him and his wildly clicking geiger counter with mild interest. It’s only when he approaches the studio door, with its bright ON AIR sign illuminated, that one of the employees addresses him. They all look the age of college students: half-sullen, half-eager.

"Hey, Mr. Scientist. You can’t go in there."

Carlos pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He forgot to take them off earlier, he realizes, and they haven’t given him a headache yet.

"Do you know what this is?" he asks, lofting the geiger counter.

"Not a scientist," the guy chirps back. The badge on his chest just says  _intern_.

"This is a geiger counter, and it detects radiation levels. And right now, it’s detecting  _fatal_ radiation levels.” Pointedly, he thrusts the detector towards the kid. Right on cue, the geiger counter lets out a series of furious clicks.

"So?" the guy replies.

"Don’t you know what  _fatal_  means?” Carlos demands. “It means  _flee or die_.”

The interns are unimpressed. Carlos grumbles something unintelligible—maybe it’s a string of cursing;  _maybe_ —and shoulders his way into the studio just as the ON AIR sign flicks off.

Cecil spins around in his chair, emits a sound like a squeak, and nearly tumbles to the floor again. “Carlos!” he exclaims, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “What a pleasant surprise!”

For a moment, Carlos pauses. He doesn’t even know this ridiculous, absurd man, but it’s been a long time since anyone looked so very happy to see him. He hasn’t really bothered to even look at Cecil—just let his eyes skitter away in the diner and at the town meeting—so now he stands there, while Cecil is unguarded and off balance with his face tipped up and beaming, and  _looks_.

White dress shirt, rolled up to his elbows, revealing sleeves of tattoos: stark lines, etchings that might be eyes, shapes interlocking and spiraling, black and purple ink against medium-dark skin. Waistcoat, and a perfectly knotted tie—both dark purple—and slacks, pulled up enough at the ankles to show that his socks don’t match. Dress shoes, scuffed. Hair, short on the sides and long on top. White on top, too, in stark contrast to the deep black of it behind his ears. He runs a hand through it now, leaving it ruffled, and Carlos wonders if it’s dye or just Night Vale.

Everything about him is angular and lean: his chin, his jaw, the line of his glasses, the arch of his dark eyebrows, the high cut of his cheekbones, the little sideways crook in his nose where it might have been broken once. This hardly seems like the place to have such sharp edges.

“That certainly makes a lot of noise,” Cecil comments, directing a curious glance to the geiger counter.

Carlos clears his throat and looks back to the geiger counter’s display. “Yeah, that’s…part of the problem.” He waves the detector toward the soundboard.

"What does it mean?" Cecil asks, for all the world like he’s got all the time in the world, like the readout on the soundboard isn’t warning him that he’s back on the air in ninety seconds. His headphones play tinny music from his shoulders; Carlos can barely hear it above the geiger counter.

"It’s testing for materials," Carlos mutters, disheartened by how spectacularly badly his attempt at education with the intern had gone, and waves the detector over Cecil’s microphone.

The crackle is suddenly deafening, a stream of static that doesn’t let up. Instinctively, Carlos leaps back, nearly dropping the geiger counter.

"Carlos?" Finally, Cecil looks a little concerned, his smile drawing into a worried frown. "What is it?"

"You’ve got to get out of this building," Carlos says, flipping the geiger counter off. The crackling makes it hard to think. "Seriously. I don’t know what happened, but about twenty minutes ago, I started picking up more than the usual background radiation, and now—what you heard there—that level of radiation is deadly. Get your interns and go. Until it stops."

Cecil, unbelievably, laughs. “I can’t go,” he says, pointing to the display. Forty-five seconds. “I’ve got a show to do. I know! You should stay for an interview, and I can get more information for our listeners about this—radiation, you said?”

"No," Carlos replies, too blunt, and backs up to the station door. "No, I—I can’t stay. I have to investigate this further. Leave, Cecil,  _please_.”

He doesn’t wait for the radio host to reply, but bolts out, past the chuckling interns, down three flights of stairs. He doesn’t turn the geiger counter back on, and it’s only with great restraint that he walks back to the lab instead of running.

Once the door is locked behind him, he hunts down a plastic bag and methodically strips out of his lab coat, his clothes, all of it. He knots the material up tight in the bag, wonders what Night Vale could possibly have in the way of hazardous waste disposal, and leaves it on his desk with the geiger counter. He takes the stairs two at a time to his apartment, turns on the shower, and doesn’t wait for the water to warm up before getting in and scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing—until his skin is raw and red, until he can stand under the now-warm stream, panting softly, and feel his heartbeat begin to fade back toward something normal again.

From the kitchen, the radio speaks. Carlos has never owned so many radios before. He makes a note to ask Cecil how radios work, if Cecil is still alive tomorrow, because it seems like Cecil has been on and off the air all day, and that doesn’t seem normal.

“ _That new scientist, we now know, is named **Carlos**. He called a town meeting. He has a square jaw and teeth like a military cemetery. His hair is perfect, and we all hate and despair and love that perfect hair in equal measure._ ”

Carlos snorts and runs a hand through his sopping hair. There’s that word again.  _Perfect_. His hair’s been a mess all day. Cecil has some sense of humor.

“ _Carlos told us that we are, by far, the most scientifically interesting community in the U.S._ ,” Cecil continues. “ _And he had come to study just what was going on around here! He grinned, and everything about him was perfect. And I fell in love **instantly**._ ”

“ _Dios mío_ ,” Carlos groans, sticking his head back under the shower. It’s effective at blocking out Cecil’s voice.

_Maybe the guy’s like this with all newcomers_ , Carlos reasons.  _Maybe he waxes poetic so that the town will love them and be more inclined to protect them from the weirdness going on. Maybe he really likes to watch people squirm._

_Maybe I should ask him to stop._

But Carlos is bad at confrontation, to say the least, so he shelves that idea. He can always ask…later. If it gets truly unbearable. If it doesn’t stop soon.

Maybe a haircut will shut him up.


	6. Ralph's

The next morning, Carlos dares to turn the geiger counter on. It stays mostly quiet, clicking sheepishly here and there—the usual, even when he lets the detector hover over the clothes he bagged last night. He resolves to take the thing apart later, after he’s had coffee, to make sure it isn’t broken.

First, though, coffee.

The City Council was kind enough to furnish his apartment—complete with an old Mr. Coffee coffeemaker, like the one he had in college—but there’s no food in the fridge, and nothing but well-worn dishes in the cabinets. He flips open the orientation binder on his kitchen table to the map section, squints hard for ten seconds, and locates the Ralph’s. It’s only about three blocks away.

His stomach growls. He hasn’t eaten since that crumpled granola bar yesterday afternoon, he remembers. Diner first, then.

It’s early enough that the overnight chill hasn’t worn off all the way. The temperature is pleasant, even—reminds him of Flagstaff. And the town is quiet, sleepy. It could be a Saturday morning in any other small town.

The diner, too, is deserted. He orders the same breakfast as yesterday from the same waitress, but remembers the coffee this time, since Cecil isn’t here to remember it for him. He wonders, briefly, if Cecil’s still alive. Seemed lively enough at the end of his broadcast last night. But Carlos still doesn’t know exactly how the broadcast works, so that could have been a message recorded before he…expired. Carlos shivers.

He waits for the check for a good fifteen minutes, but it doesn’t arrive. The waitress comes to top off his coffee.

"No thanks," he says, waving her off. "Just the bill?"

She stares back at him, unimpressed. “Right, you’re new. Look, you don’t need me for the bill, kid.” Perhaps he looks suitably baffled, because she relents, clears her throat, and hisses, “Check pleasssssse” into his coffee cup. “Under the sugar packets,” she adds, and walks away.

He picks up the tray of sugar packets, and there’s the bill, filled out in neat, legible handwriting. He spends a good five minutes trying to figure out where it came from, but in the end, nothing he observes can explain the sudden appearance of the bill. He leaves cash and retreats, only slightly unnerved. He feels a bone-deep acceptance of the absurd-but-harmless settling in.

There are a few shoppers inside the Ralph’s, all puttering about with their minds far from him. Even the cashier doesn’t look at him twice. This reassures him. He pulls out a cart and sets off for the produce section.

He’s gingerly feeling the apricots for ripeness when a bright voice greets him from across the aisle. “Carlos!”

He jumps, nearly drops an apricot, and looks up. There’s Cecil, perfectly healthy, beaming at him over the heaping piles of fruit.

"Cecil," he says, a bit cautiously. "Feeling okay?"

"Never better! Did you learn anything new about the materials?"

"No," Carlos mutters, looking back down at the apricots. "I suspect that my geiger counter is broken. Sorry for the, ah. The panic."

"Oh, it was nothing." He sounds like he means it, too, all genuine and warm. "Did the City Council not stock your new apartment with food?" A note of concern creeps into his voice.

"No," Carlos replies, bagging a few apricots at last.

"They should have! What were they thinking? How could you have time for such a mundane task, when there’s science to be done?”

"It’s not a problem," Carlos says, before Cecil can get too outraged. "They’ve been very generous, and I’m used to doing my own shopping."

"Let me show you what’s good," Cecil insists. "Some of our food can be…surprising…to outsiders."

Carlos hesitates. Cecil seems hopeful, perfectly cheerful—helpful, even—but Carlos is still afraid that he’s going to randomly begin waxing poetic about Carlos’s hair in that radio voice of his.

But…he doesn’t necessarily want to buy something toxic on accident.

"Okay," he says cautiously. "Lead the way."

Mostly, Cecil just follows him around, doing his own shopping and warning Carlos off anything that could be dangerous. “Not that one,” he says of the brand-name half and half. “It causes hallucinations. Not great for a lab setting, I think.”

Slowly, Carlos relaxes. It’s clear that Cecil doesn’t expect him to respond to anything he might have said on the radio; there’s no mention of perfect hair or pet names or…love. Cecil might occasionally blush, or mumble, or stutter, but otherwise he’s perfectly good company—and a local comes in handy, trying to navigate the decidedly more treacherous Ralph’s than Carlos is used to back home.

"Do you like Night Vale so far?" Cecil asks while they’re in the cereal section. There are quite a few brands Carlos has never heard of before.

"I’ll get back to you when it lets me catch my breath," Carlos chuckles.

"Outsiders don’t come here often," Cecil says, with the air of someone admitting a guilty secret. "I think we’re hard to find."

“ _¡En serio!_  I was told it would be a four-hour drive. Drove around in the desert for eight extra hours. Two of my team haven’t even made it here yet.”

"They might have gotten lost in the scrub lands and the sand wastes," Cecil says, and for a moment, he sounds like his radio host self—the slightly deeper inflection; the mournful, imposing cadence.

"And two of them," Carlos goes on, for all the world like Cecil cares about his problems, "are already thinking about leaving."

Cecil scrunches up his nose. “They’ve already left,” he offers apologetically.

“ _Por dios_. How do you—”

"It’s news," Cecil sighs. "One of my interns lives near Route 800. She saw them leave last night. She texted me."

Carlos runs an agitated hand through his hair. “There goes my physicist. Andmy ethnographer.”

"I’m sorry, Carlos," Cecil murmurs, and he truly sounds it.

"Don’t be," he says, tired again already. Maye he’ll go back to bed after this shopping trip is over. "It’s not your fault. I knew if this town was even half as interesting as the reports hinted at, not all of them would stay. I wasn’t even sure I would stay.”

"You don’t have to." Cecil sounds even sadder. "I know that the City Council and the Sheriff’s Secret Police won’t hold you to anything. You came here voluntarily, and you can leave voluntarily."

Carlos glances sideways. Cecil’s eyes are peruse the cereal, his lips tugged down, his shoulders slumped. There are little crinkles between his eyebrows, at the corners of his eyes. Carlos wonders how many people have come in and out of this town—how many Cecil has reported on with bright fascination and hopeful resolve, only to watch them flee.

He wonders if anyone back home misses him as much as Cecil would. What a weird thing to wonder, right?

"The grant was very generous," Carlos says at last. "And I don’t scare so easy. I’m not going anywhere."

Cecil smiles tentatively at the cereal. “You certainly looked scared last night,” he teases, but gently.

Carlos snorts, taking the jab for what it is: a moment of normalcy in a sea of anomalies. “I thought we were all going to die. Even brave men get a little jumpy at that point. It’s only human.”

"Not all of us are  _only_  human,” Cecil says loftily, adding oatmeal to his cart.

"You’re kidding," Carlos groans, and Cecil just laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If my Spanish is terrible, tell me. I’ll fix it. Or try my best to, anyway.


	7. Delivery

Carlos isn't here to make friends.

He forcibly reminds himself of that over the weekend by staying firmly shut in his lab and ignoring his phone when it buzzes. None of the other remaining scientists come by, and the two who never showed up stay lost. His team is down to three, and he doubts that reinforcements are in the offing.

He's not sure he wants reinforcements. This is some serious Hotel California shit, and he's not confident about their chances for getting out alive, especially if Cecil's broadcasts are to be believed.

He can't stop listening to the damn things. Inevitably, he finds himself at his kitchen table at the end of the day, quietly eating dinner with his eyes fixed on the radio. Cecil chuckles. Cecil reads. Cecil announces things that should not be happening. Cecil doesn't mention Carlos—not once.

Carlos is starting to worry that he imagined Cecil's monologues about him on the radio—not because he wants Cecil to keep monologuing about him, but because auditory hallucinations aren't good for you. He hasn't heard a thing about himself since that first broadcast, and he watches the radio with eyes narrowed, silently daring it to mention his name. Not a peep.

Late Sunday night, though, there's a rustle outside his open window. He sticks his head out just in time to see someone vanish around the corner of the building on the pavement below. There's a basket left behind on the welcome mat. (He didn't know he had a welcome mat.)

He trots downstairs, opens the door, and squints down at the basket for a long moment. It seems innocuous enough. Coffee, cereal, chocolate. The staples for a life with little time to cook. He scoops up the basket. There's decaf, too, which is nice. He knows it's not good for him to drink the caffeinated stuff late at night. His stomach tells him so, anyway.

Near the row of bushes to his left, someone coughs. "It was Cecil," a sly voice says.

Carlos isn't remotely surprised that someone is lurking in his bushes at midnight, but he does want to know why. For science.

"Why are you in my bushes?" he asks.

"Secret Police," the voice replies, and then there's a groan as the bush rustles around. "The graveyard shift."

Carlos thinks this over. He supposes it's pointless to ask why the Secret Police are watching his lab, and he's never been about harassing the workers to get at their bosses.

"Cecil, you said?" he asks, rummaging deeper into the basket. Cookies. Homemade, by the looks of them. His mouth waters. He tries to convince himself that they're safe to eat—that the Voice of Night Vale wouldn't poison him.

"Don't know why he didn't knock," the voice grunts. "Must've just left the station. Maybe he didn't want you to know it was him."

"Well," Carlos says, sort of amused, "you've ruined that for him."

"That's my job." He says it with a note of pride, even though the bush is still rustling, like he can't get comfortable.

"Do you want a chair?" Carlos asks.

"Not allowed. Gotta be sharp. Have a good night, doctor."

Carlos doesn't bother to correct the officer—the title is true enough, he supposes, but he won't be stitching up anyone's wounds anytime soon—and returns to his apartment. Upstairs, he breaks out the decaf coffee. Despite the fact that it appears to be sealed, there's a folded scrap of paper tucked inside, grounds collected in the creases.

 _Just in case_ , the note says.

"Just in case what?" Carlos mutters, but he puts the coffee on, anyway.

The radio murmurs. Nothing distinct, just shadowing mumbling interrupted by bursts of static. Carlos opens his laptop, thinks about what he's doing, and then opens up a plain text document.

He needs data. He needs whatever he can collect out of the sea of weird lapping around him, and sometimes, his own eyes will have to do. If he's going to survive Night Vale—if any of them are—he needs to learn what this community is like. He needs to take notes.

 _06/17/2012_ , he types, then glances at the clock and makes a face. _06/18/2012_ , he amends.

_The Sheriff's Secret Police have stationed someone outside the lab. He's just a voice in the bushes, and he told me that Cecil dropped off the basket that was on my welcome mat. I did not put a welcome mat by the door. It doesn't actually say 'welcome' at all, but something in symbols that are not familiar to me. That doesn't mean anything; I'm not familiar with every language…_

He writes, with the careful clacking of keys, until he's poured out everything he remembers of the last three days and his eyes are itching with tiredness and his coffee has gone cold.

He doesn't check his e-mail. He knows, by the little envelope illuminated on his phone, that he has no less than twenty-seven e-mails waiting for him, but he wants to hold them at arm's length a while longer. It's easier to be in Night Vale and pretend that it isn't real when there's no outside contact; if he sees a letter from home, it's evidence to the contrary, and it might be more than his mind can handle just now.

Besides, his funding doesn't come from the researchers back home who scoffed at him, sniggered at him, gossiped about him. He doesn't owe them shit.

When he finally staggers to bed, he dreams in patterns and waves and bursts of static.


	8. Resignation

The first week goes by both too quickly and too slowly. (Maybe that has less to do with Carlos’s perception of time, and more to do with time not moving the way it should in Night Vale. He’ll have to look into it eventually.)

Without someone else setting the schedule, Carlos finds, he spends too much time in the lab. Without classes to break up his work, he vanishes into his research, and his fellow scientists do the same. Navid spends most of his day at the monitoring station off Route 800; Camila takes to interviewing volunteers at all hours of the day and night; Nita does a lot of experiments out at the house that doesn’t exist. One day she comes back with her hair sticking up in every direction, the crackle of static around her palpable.

"It might not exist," she comments grimly, "but it sure packs a punch."

The other two scientists never turn up. Nita helps him report their absence to the City Council, as well as the flight of the physicist and ethnographer.

"I’m minoring in anthropology," Nita informs him, in tones of great superiority. "I can help with the ethnography, if you want."

Carlos minored in anthropology, too, but that was more than a decade ago. He lets her have the project and resolves to review her work carefully; born and raised in Night Vale, Nita still takes some unusual things for granted, like bloodstone circles and ritualistic chants. Any outsider will need some extra elaboration on those.

Not that Carlos thinks he’ll ever get an outsider to read past the first paragraph of anything he writes about this place. He’ll forever be the laughingstock of the scientific community after this. He’s sort of resigned himself to it now, in the same way he’s resigned himself to the sun setting at the wrong time and the man grumbling in the bushes outside his lab and the radios that don’t turn off.

"They’re trying to get you caught up," Nita says. "It’s polite."

"Caught up on  _what_?” Carlos demands, gesturing helplessly to the radio. “The state of my hair?”

"I think it’s important that we all know, boss," Camila cuts in with a perfectly straight face. "I for one—"

"Shut up," he mutters, glares halfheartedly at the radio, and then goes back to examining the blood sample Old Woman Josie got from one of her angel friends. She doesn’t think it’s important, but Carlos is wondering if he can at least prove a divergence from homo sapiens.

"It’s sort of sweet, in that Night Vale way," Camila muses. "And it’s not like he’s hanging out in your bushes at night."

"No, we’ve got the Secret Police to do that," Nita replies sagely.

"Oh, right," Camila agrees. "I think my officer is cute. His voice sounds cute, anyway. Still haven’t gotten a glimpse. Very shy. But anyway—I think he’s harmless."

"What, the Secret Police?" Carlos replies absently. Through the microscope, the blood cells have started glowing faintly purple.  _That’s not right_ , he thinks, groping for a pen.

"Writing utensils are banned, you know," Nita mutters resentfully.

"No,  _Cecil_ ,” Camila says. “I don’t have a full psych profile for him yet, but just judging by what I hear on the radio, I’m not concerned.”

"I hope you’re very good at your job, then," Carlos mutters, scribbling with one eye still on the microscope’s lens. "Otherwise my life is hanging in the balance."

"Did you bother to read my profile?" Camila teases. "I’m the best in the biz, boss."

"I didn’t see that tagline on your CV."

She flicks a paperclip at him. He ignores it.

By the end of the week, Carlos has safely resigned himself to everything about Night Vale: the glittering lights above the Arby’s that don’t appear to be stars; the wild seismic readings Navid keeps producing; the dog park that gives him a headache to so much as glance at; the sight of Camila interviewing a silent black figure—what looks like a motionless statue—and jotting down notes as if it’s talking back.

None of this stuff has made a motion to kill him, after all. In fact, this first week in Night Vale has been pleasantly free of those mortality rates he’d been warned about. None of the stuff they’re investigating has harmed any of them—or any of the town, as far as he can tell. It should be harming them, some of it, but the worst that’s happened is Nita’s hair emergency, and she didn’t seem particularly fazed by that.

When he finally cracks open his e-mail over a beer Friday night, supplemented by a whole pizza from Big Rico’s—“On the house for your first time,” the owner had said with a wink—it’s to no less than forty-three e-mails from three primary parties: his brother, the Chair of Biology who granted Carlos his sabbatical, and a fellow faculty member whose appeal to Night Vale’s City Council had been denied.

His brother’s messages are all in the same vein, and grow increasingly panicked as he goes another day without hearing back.

**Adán**  
to me  
Jun 16

_Can’t get you on your phone. Did you make it out to that hellhole or what?_

**Adán**  
to me  
Jun 16

_Don’t get lost in all that sciency crap before you tell me you’re alive._

**Adán**  
to me  
Jun 17

_Bro, Karim has been telling me all kinds of shit about what he’s heard about Night Vale. Call me back._

"Of course you’d get that asshole involved," Carlos mutters, but he checks his phone all the same. He doesn’t have any missed calls or text messages; in fact, it appears that he has no signal at all. Just to test it, he taps in  _Cam_ and calls the number that it brings up.

"It’s the weekend, boss," Camila answers after the second ring.

"Yeah, just testing something. Looks like we’ve got no signal to the outside world but we can call people within Night Vale."

"What rock have you been under all week?"

Before he can come up with a witty retort, she hangs up. “Some of us don’t have social lives outside of Night Vale,” he grumbles belatedly.

He’s glad she didn’t hear it. It sounds much more pathetic out loud than it did in his head.

He fires off an email to his brother that’s just as abrupt as all the emails Adán has sent him, and moves on. They haven’t made more than terse conversation since Papi died. Before it, too, actually. He doesn’t remember the last time his baby brother had a single sympathetic word for him.

He huffs out a sigh, ruffles his hair back from his face, and marks the rest of the messages from Adán as read.

**Karim**  
to me  
Jun 18

_As long as your voicemail is still running, we’ll all assume it’s just something interrupting the signal. Stay in touch. You’re in deep shit out there._

"Jealous," Carlos mutters—just a touch resentfully.

**Carlos**  
to Karim  
Jun 22

_\- see attached seismograph  
\- see also attached video of Night Vale during earthquake_

The Chair doesn’t have much to say, just some passive-aggressive resentment about losing his most dependable faculty member for a whole year to a wild goose chase. Carlos doesn’t bother to reply to that one. He’s on sabbatical, after all. The Chair can go fuck himself.

Carlos has had it up to the top of that apparently non-existent mountain with _dependable_.


	9. Hail

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are additional notes this week, but I’ll tuck them at the end of the chapter.

There is a dead crow in Carlos’s lab.

Its wings are spread over the table, its beak pointing to the ceiling. It’s a little dusty—probably from plummeting to the earth—but otherwise, it looks perfectly healthy. There is no evidence of its death. Its feathers are pristine, its beak sharp and healthy, its eyes shiny. If a taxidermist could achieve animals that looked like this, his clients would weep for joy.

But the crow is dead. It does not breathe, and its heart does not beat, and it fell from a brightly glowing cloud.

It’s also  _very_ radioactive. That might be what killed it.

”Sorry to bother you, Cecil.”

"It’s not a bother! Not a bother  _at all_. To what do I owe the pleasure, Carlos?”

"It’s about the glow cloud," he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. He registers Cecil’s delight only peripherally. He has been in Night Vale for two weeks, and this is already old news. Cecil’s adoration—real or not—isn’t going to kill him. A radioactive glow cloud, though…

"Remarkable, isn’t it?" Cecil asks. "We’ve never had anything quite like it. There was the glowering dust devil, of course—"

"Glowering dust devil?" Carlos interrupts, unable to help himself.

"Well," Cecil mutters, "it seemed like it was glowering to me. Grouchy. That was the feeling I got from it."

"Do you usually get feelings from meteorological events?" Carlos feels himself grinning and turns away from Camila’s smug look.

"We live in a desert, Mr. Scientist," Cecil says. "How many meteorological events do you think we get here? Not enough for me to have enough data to make such an encompassing statement."

"Of course."  _Very articulate of you_ , he adds silently, but Cecil’s silence seems quite proud, like he knows anyway. “Anyway, about the glow cloud. I would not recommend that anyone… _run directly at the crowd, shrieking and waving your arms_ ,” he reads, directly from the carefully-typewritten letter that had appeared on his doorstep while he was out collecting radioactive dead animals. “I know the Sheriff’s Secret Police mean well, but I have strong evidence that the thing’s radioactive. Could be a problem.”

"You’re acclimating," Cecil teases. "What happened to  _fatal means flee or die_?”

"It could," Carlos defends, embarrassed and unsure why. "Look, will you just tell them?"

"I wouldn’t endorse running at the glow cloud, either," Cecil says, sage and serious again. "Feels very  _despotic_ to me.”

"How accurate was your feeling about that dust devil?" Carlos asks—for science.

"It threw a tantrum at Big Rico’s. Pepperoni everywhere."

"Maybe we should run some tests," Carlos says, sort of joking. "Maybe you’re clairvoyant."

Cecil coughs. “Anything else? I’m on the air in a minute—”

"No," Carlos replies, frowning now. "No, that’s all. Thanks, Cecil."

"No problem," Cecil says, perking up again. His voice had gone funny there, for a minute, all distant and cool. "Thank you for calling, Carlos."

Carlos hangs up. “ _What_?” he demands, rounding on Camila and Nita, who have been giggling and whispering behind him for the past minute.

Straight-faced, Camila points to the dead crow. Its wings are arranged dramatically over its breast, a single flower clasped between feathers.

"Did you  _touch_  it?” Carlos asks, appalled.

"It was Nita," Camila says. She bursts into laughter again, for all the world like an ill-controlled teenager rather than a woman with threads of gray in her hair and crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

"How’s your boyfriend?" Nita asks, still straight-faced.

"He’s not my boyfriend," Carlos replies, as simply and non-confrontationally as he can, and turns the geiger counter off. The constant clicking is giving him a headache. "I haven’t even seen him in two weeks."

"You’re on the p-phone with him of-hic-ten enough," Camila says through her hiccups, wiping her eyes.

"He’s the radio host," Carlos mutters. "Everyone listens to him. If I can save some lives by getting him on the phone for five minutes—"

"He’s right," Nita agrees. "Cecil’s the town darling. Everyone listens to him." She lowers her voice. "Even the Sheriff’s Secret Police, sometimes," she whispers.

Camila lets out another helpless giggle.

"Go home," Carlos says wearily. "And take a shower, just in case. Thorough scrubbing. First thing. You," he adds sternly to Nita, "scrub your hands before you leave."

She sticks her tongue out at him—the nerve—but does as he says. He bids them both good night and strips off his lab coat before trudging up the stairs to his apartment, loosening the buttons at his collar as he goes. Cecil is just coming on the air. It’s nine in the evening, and the sun hasn’t set yet.

“ _The desert seems vast, even endless, and yet scientists tell us that somewhere, even now, there is snow._ " Cecil’s voice is deeply sardonic.

"I know," Carlos says to the radio, just as deeply unapologetic. "The nerve of them."

He detects no ill will from the device, though, so he turns the shower on and lets Cecil’s voice fade into the background.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize that this chapter wasn’t posted on Friday. Truth be told, I needed a little time away from the fandom to collect my thoughts before I could even think of writing another silly drabble for this fic.
> 
> I’m a newcomer to this fandom. It’s only been a few weeks. I started listening to the podcast again in time to catch the tail end of the horrible things that have been happening. ([There is a good post about it here, in case you missed it, complete with links. Trigger warnings for suicide, racism, and a lot of shitty behavior.](http://saltysalmonella.tumblr.com/post/82302816696/a-poc-ended-up-in-the-hospital-for-wtnv-what-happened))
> 
> I’m not going to write much about it here. A lot of what needs to be said has already been said, by people who have written it better than I could. I’m white, so I cannot truly comprehend how traumatizing this experience (and the general bullshit I’ve seen in the tags) has been for the POC of this fandom.
> 
> All I want to say is this: if I do anything problematic, call me out; if there is anything I can do to help you, let me know; if you need support, I am here. If there’s something else I can do as a writer or a person to make your experience in this fandom safer, tell me what that thing is, and I will do my best.
> 
> This is not a petty debate about differing headcanons. This is a very real, very painful outcry against racism (among other things) that for some reason has proliferated in a fandom that has an incredibly diverse source text.
> 
> I hope that including a diverse cast in this fic (a POC Cecil, Carlos’s team of scientists, and the other fantastic individuals from the podcast—like Cecil’s interns—all of whom we’ll hear more about as we go forward) helps, in a small way, to make this fandom a better and more inclusive place for you. It is not at all the same, but as a woman, I know what it is like to have no reflection of myself—or few reflections that I actually like—in popular fiction. This little contribution will never by any understanding of the term be _popular_ , but it can still offer a reflection.


	10. Wednesday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the missing update yesterday, folks. I was a little out of it.

So far, Night Vale has been sufficiently creepy—plenty of weird shit, but no _threatening_ shit.

Losing an entire Wednesday is not just weird. It is  _terrifying_.

Carlos wakes up on Thursday with no memory of Wednesday. He remembers falling asleep on Tuesday night—remembers the rustle the Secret Police Officer made in the bushes beneath his open window, remembers the distant thrum of helicopter blades, remembers the scent of burnt coffee riding in light from the kitchen—but he wakes groggy and disoriented, muscles stiff, and does not remember Wednesday.

His phone insists that it is Thursday. His phone insists, too, that he took no notes yesterday. The impeccably organized files on his laptop corroborate this story. But Carlos always takes notes. And if he didn’t take notes, then—

"That’s impossible," he says out loud, swinging his legs out of bed. He’s a little panicky, the breath too sharp in his chest. He struggles to breathe evenly and slowly, to calm his pounding heart. Despite the disorientation, he’s starving—like any day after he’s forgotten to eat. He feels the scratchiness of second-day stubble lining his jaw.

He had brushed off that community calendar thing that Cecil had announced on the radio— _Wednesday has been cancelled due to a scheduling error_. He had assumed that was the Night Vale equivalent of a holiday, with everyone taking the day off and going about their leisure activities. There wasn’t a traditionally recognized American holiday on that date, of course, but Night Vale was Night Vale. Carlos hadn’t really given it a second thought.

He’s giving it a second thought now. When he stands, his head spins. He makes a beeline for the sink and slurps down two glasses of water before his phone rings.

"Do you remember anything that happened yesterday?" Camila asks, businesslike, when he answers.

"I don’t think yesterday happened,” he says, just a touch helplessly.

"Yeah, well. We’ve got some brain stuff to check up on, boss. Meet you at the lab."

When Camila hangs up, the next thing Carlos does is call Cecil. He doesn’t pick up, of course. It’s seven in the morning; the radio station number rings, and rings, and goes to voicemail.

"You’ve reached Night Vale Community Radio," Cecil’s radio voice tells him. "Please leave your unusual sighting, community announcement, or neighborly concern at the tone. We will follow up on your story when we return."

"It’s Carlos," Carlos says, after the thing that sounds less like a tone and more like a small cat faking a lion’s roar. "I need to talk to you about Wednesday. Call me back when you get a chance."

It’s a drawn, tense morning for everyone except Nita. She seems completely unfazed by the missing Wednesday—well-rested, even—but she sits patiently through all of Camila’s questions all the same. Navid looks a little grayer around the temples; Camila has bags under her eyes; Carlos wonders how awful he looks, since he didn’t bother with a mirror that morning.

Their most recent memories all date back to Tuesday night. None of them remember being awake on Wednesday. By Camila’s quick, efficient memory tests, their short-term memories are intact. There doesn’t appear to be any head trauma or lasting memory damage.

"It just happens every once in a while," Nita insists. "City Council messes up, a day gets cancelled, we all get to sleep in…a lot." She grins. Carlos never found that expression threatening before, but he does now.

"How often is every once in a while?” Carlos asks wearily. “Some of the tests I set in motion on Tuesday afternoon are ruined now.”

"Just pay attention to the community calendar," Nita says. "Cecil always warns us."

"Right." He scrubs his hands over his eyes. "We’re obviously not getting anything done today."

"Sorry, boss," Camila says, hiding a yawn behind her hand. "For apparently having slept for more than twenty-four hours, I’m exhausted."

"Make sure you all eat," Carlos advises. "Go home and get some rest."

They trickle out. Carlos stays where he is, perched on his lab stool, looking at the petri dishes of lost data, neglected for a day. He’ll just have to start over, he decides. There are plenty of samples to come by.

"Carlos? Are you all right?"

He jumps and nearly topples off his stool; a hand darts out to steady him.

"I knocked," Cecil offers apologetically, "but you didn’t answer, and I was worried after the message you left me."

"Sorry," Carlos mutters. "Thanks for coming." He squints. "Though you could have just called."

"I did," Cecil returns.

Carlos digs out his phone. No less than five phone calls.

"Sorry," he says again. "I’m a little disoriented."

Cecil’s hand, still on his arm, squeezes reassuringly. “You don’t look well. Can I get you anything? Cup of coffee, maybe?”

Belatedly, Carlos realizes that his head is pounding. It’s the kind of throbbing headache he always gets when he doesn’t have caffeine in the morning.

"Yeah," Carlos agrees, getting to his feet. "Come on upstairs."

Cecil follows him, but once they’re in Carlos’s kitchen, he points to a seat at the table. “Sit,” he says. “I’ll get it.”

Carlos is not really in the mood to argue. He watches the radio host putter around his kitchen, putting the coffee on, pushing toast down, bringing the bunch of bananas over to the table, and doesn’t fight him.

Once he’s had a few sips of coffee, he looks up to find Cecil gazing at him over the frame of his glasses, his hands twitching anxiously around his own mug.

"You wanted to talk about Wednesday," Cecil reminds him.

"I don’t even know where to start," Carlos admits. "What happens when a day is—cancelled, I guess? I don’t remember…anything."

"You wouldn’t. You were asleep. We all were. That’s what happens."

"Was it something in the food? The water? How did they ensure that we’d all sleep through the day?" He doesn’t define this mysterious  _they_.

"I don’t know," Cecil muses. "You’re the scientist, aren’t you?"

"I’ll need to test the water, our food, the air quality before the next…cancellation," Carlos mutters. "But I didn’t eat out last night— _Tuesday_  night,” he corrects. “I had leftovers from the weekend. Can’t get in there. So water, but then the timing is problematic, and no guarantee that everyone in town will drink it at the right time. Air quality—didn’t think City Council had the resources to disperse a chemical that will knock everyone out at the same time for a prescribed length of time. When’s the next cancelled day?”

"No more this month, that I know of," Cecil replies. He’s smiling a little.

"What?" Carlos asks, refocusing.

"All of these things happen in Night Vale," Cecil says. "Things that we take for granted, but they’re obviously unusual for you."

Carlos chokes back a laugh. “Were you born here?”

Cecil’s smile falters. “I think so,” he replies. “I don’t remember—anything else. Except the holiday in Svitz, maybe. Franchia. But I’ve lived here all my life.”

“ _Unusual_  doesn’t really cover it,” Carlos explains. “That’s why I’m here.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, sipping coffee, eating toast. Carlos feels strangely at peace, his earlier panic melted into a haze of tiredness.

"Here," Cecil offers, picking up Carlos’s phone from the table. "I’ll give you my home number. That way, you have any questions about the usual unusual events, you don’t have to wait for me to get to the radio station to answer them. Or, you know. Anything else you need."

He punches in his number and hands the phone back. Their fingers brush, only briefly, but Cecil’s face goes a little darker around his cheekbones. His eyes fall to his coffee cup; he clears his throat, rubs the back of his neck. There’s a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.

"Thanks for the welcome basket," Carlos says, smiling himself and not really sure why. "I keep forgetting to say."

"You’re welcome," Cecil says, and then, "oh, no, it was supposed to be _anonymous_.”

"The Secret Police aren’t good at keeping secrets."

"Damn them," Cecil says, but there’s no real fire in it. "I bet it was Raj. What an asshole."

Carlos chuckles. It was a weird Wednesday, but Thursday’s turning out okay.


	11. Transmission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Might have to change to Monday-Wednesday-Friday updating, instead of every weekday. We’ll see.

Carlos thinks about calling Cecil, but he doesn’t do it.

"How’s Night Vale treating you,  _hermano_?” Adán asks the first time he gets Carlos on the phone. It’s only because Carlos called  _him_ —not the other way around. Calls from the outside don’t seem to connect.

"Fine," he lies. "Don’t listen to Karim. He’s an alarmist."

"He showed me that seismograph and the video," Adán fires back. “Said he wouldn’t believe anyone else, but they get the readings out of that station, too. Sounds pretty alarming to me.”

"Well, I’m not dead yet," Carlos replies. "Unless I’m calling from hell."

Adán actually laughs at that. He must actually be concerned. “What’s it like? Weird as promised?”

"Weirder," Carlos agrees.

"How’re the locals treating you?"

"Fine. Nice people. Even the ones that…aren’t people. They’re cooperative. Welcoming."

“ _Ay, caramba_ ," Adán says, faintly accusing. “You  _like_  it there.”

"Why not? Scientific opportunity of a lifetime. There’s even a five-headed dragon."

Adán doesn’t justify that with a response. Carlos doesn’t blame him. He sort of doesn’t believe what he saw, either.

”Just make sure you make it out in one piece,” Adán warns. “Don’t get sucked in.”

"I’m not getting sucked in," Carlos shoots back, thinking of Cecil. "The locals are nice, but I’m not—not settling down, or anything." He pauses. "No one can get the radio out there, right?"

"What, that  _loco_ station all those files talk about? Nah. No one but you wanted to get close enough to hear it.”

"Good," Carlos mutters, wrinkling his nose. He can’t even imagine the kind of mockery he would have to endure if anyone on the outside ever heard Cecil going on about him the way that he does.

"Stay alive," Adán says.

"I’m trying," Carlos replies. "I’m going to send you an e-mail with some names—try and find out if they’re okay."

"Who?" Adán asks, suspicious.

"Two scientists never made it. I hope they just decided against it at the last minute, but if they’re really missing, someone should file a report out there. And two of them left after the first day. Want to make sure they made it out."

Adán pauses, as if he’s considering this. “Maybe you  _are_ in hell,  _hermano_. Doesn’t sound like the scientific opportunity of a lifetime to me.”

They hang up without saying goodbye. Carlos thinks about calling Cecil, but he tells himself he shouldn’t get involved; that this sabbatical will only last a year; that he will leave Night Vale someday and all of these little friendships and encounters should be discouraged, or he won’t be  _able_  leave.

His brother and his tenure are still outside. He still has something to go back to. The funding will run out eventually, and he’ll go back to his quiet, respectable life, where he doesn’t question his glasses prescription every five minutes.

The weather is on the radio in his kitchen. He listens while he starts on three days’ worth of dishes. He never recognizes the songs Cecil plays—much less knows what it has to do with the weather—but he usually likes them.

_Grab hold of yourself, I know what it’s like to get blown away_  
 _I know you, you’ve done_  
 _Your dirt and you’ve dug your graves_  
 _And it feels like you won’t be saved_  
 _I say grab hold yourself and face those days_  
 _When you feel like it always rains_  
 _I’ve seen the sunny side of hell,_  
 _That which I never thought I’d find for myself  
_ _Never thought I’d find for myself_

Carlos likes the voice on the radio. It’s reassuring and funny, and the man attached to it doesn’t seem to really want anything from him except for a few hilarious stories. The people in town don’t give him funny looks because of what Cecil says; they smile at him and say hello and go about their business. He doesn’t know of anywhere else on the planet where that would happen.

Maybe he doesn’t really have anything to go back to, after all. Adán has been more talkative since he left. None of his more questionable experiments have inspired hearty snickers and pointing fingers. He likes his colleagues, and he doesn’t have to answer to anyone, least of all a department chair who hates him. He’s tried to update the City Council and Secret Police both a few times now, to the same result: they just don’t care. They want him to run his tests and study, and they don’t want anything out of the funding they’re throwing at him. Yet.

He should be worried about that, but maybe life is just throwing him a bone.

But the funding  _will_ run out, and then he’ll have no choice.

“ _Listeners_ ,” Cecil muses. Carlos turns the water off. “I _sometimes wonder—as we all have—what this all means. Maybe it means nothing. Maybe it means_ _ **something**. Maybe we are all waving and drowning. Maybe we don’t know it yet. But treading water is the same as standing paralyzed while your future bears down on you with gleaming teeth. Wouldn’t you rather be swimming?_ ”

Carlos stares, long and hard, at the radio. His pulse drums in his ears.

“ _I predict a flash flood this weekend_ ,” Cecil continues cheerfully. “ _A great time to come down to the Harbor and Waterfront Recreation Area at last. Remember to pack snacks!_ ”

Carlos lets out a hoarse chuckle. For a moment, it had been as if Cecil spoke directly to him—but that’s impossible, even for Night Vale.

He leans back against the counter and opens his phone’s lock screen.  _You can predict the weather?_ he taps out. He hovers over Cecil’s name for a long few seconds before hitting  _send_.

Cecil’s response comes back quickly, considering his voice is still on the radio. _Nothing wrong with a little hope_ , he writes, followed shortly by  _:)_.

Carlos chuckles again, pockets his phone, and decides that the rest of the dishes can wait. How long has it been since he’s spent a Friday night not running experiments—not grading tests—not working? There’s got to be something for entertainment in the crap he brought from home.

Back when Adán was still speaking to him regularly, he got Carlos a 360 for Christmas. “In case you ever want to get that stick out of your ass,” he’d said at the time, smiling in a way that said he was only sort of kidding. Carlos is pretty sure that he packed it in the trunk of his car before he left—for sentimentality—along with the case of games he collected but never played.

He goes outside to dig the system out. If there was ever a time he’d earned some R&R, this is it.


End file.
